bigdatalaw-Internet Lawyers London

Novelist Martin Amis told Radio 4 recently that he doesn’t ‘do’ social media. Most of us however can’t avoid it. For businesses certainly, it seems the most effective way to promote a brand is through social media tools like Linked In, Facebook and Twitter. But what happens when employees cross the line and post material that is defamatory in some way? It’s well established that someone can be libelled online – on Twitter and elsewhere. Back in 2012 in the first ‘Twitter libel’ case in England, the New Zealand cricketer Chris Cairns was awarded £90,000 after false allegations that he was involved in match-fixing. So whether content is damaging to a third party, for example a commercial competitor or whether an individual employee posts material that defames his or her employer, it’s clear that unfettered access to social media channels presents a risk. At Big Data Law we help businesses reduce their legal exposure through carefully planned and  tailor-made advice . ...

MPs have just begun to scrutinise new legislation intended to make the UK’s data protection legislation fit for the digital age. One key principle enshrined in the Data Protection Bill, 2017 (which implements the much-publicised General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the ‘right to be forgotten’. This enables people to ask data controllers to move or delete personal data. The  new data protection regime  is likely to have far-reaching implications for our clients. We expect our commercial clients to experience a greater volume of requests to delete information as individuals, more than ever aware of their rights, take the opportunity to enforce them. But how easy will it be for individuals to enforce these rights in practice? WHAT IS THE RIGHT TO BE FORGOTTEN? The right to be forgotten (sometimes more appropriately referred to as the right to erasure) makes it easier for an individual to ask for his or her personal data to be removed when there is no comp...

Cyber attacks on large institutions like the NHS or companies like British Airways naturally dominate the headlines when they occur. But cyber crime is now also a major concern for many of the small and medium-sized businesses we represent. The FBI reported in 2016 that there was an average of 4,000  ransomware attacks  each day. For SMEs these attacks can be devastating. As the recent £60,000 fine on a small  Berkshire-based video company  shows, the size of your firm is no defence to any breach of data protection law. Even when the breach is a direct result of a criminal hack. If you are handling personal data you’re subject to the law in the strictest sense. In addition to the threat of regulatory fines (likely to increase substantially with the advent of GDPR), cybercrime presents two more obvious threats. First, reputational and financial damage to your core business. Second, the financial threat posed by claims for damages by affected customers....

Twice a year WordPress publishes a transparency report. Among other things the report gives the number of Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) notices received. These are legal requests under US law to remove material from a website that is infringing the copyright of an individual or company. The WordPress platform supports 25% of all sites across the internet. So for solicitors like us who work in this area of law – and our clients – the information gives a valuable snapshot of online copyright infringement. The  latest report  has just been published. It reveals that in the first six months of 2017 WordPress received 9,273 takedown notices – a 50 percent increase from the previous year. But interestingly only 22% of the notices actually led to the removal of copyrighted material. WordPress – and other platforms – are obliged to take DMCA notices seriously. Every notice is analysed to ensure it has been submitted in the correct format and the claim it makes is le...